Official Statistics

Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023 second edition

Updated 2 November 2023

Applies to England and Wales

Frequency of release: Annual

Forthcoming release: Home Office statistics release calendar

Home Office responsible statistician: John Flatley

Press enquires: pressoffice@homeoffice.gov.uk, Telephone: 0300 123 3535

Public enquires: crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk

This release contains statistics about hate crime offences recorded by the police in England and Wales.

In line with our published Revisions and Corrections policy, we have updated this statistical bulletin to incorporate revised data for Nottinghamshire Police relating to religious hate crimes for the year ending March 2023. The revision by Nottinghamshire Police means that the total number of religious hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2023 has been revised down from 9,387 to 8,241 offences.

This means there was a 4% fall in religious hate crimes across England and Wales compared with the previous year, rather than an increase of 9% as previously stated. The associated Data and Appendix tables have also been revised.

Key results

• in the year ending March 2023, there were 145,214 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Devon and Cornwall), a 5% decrease compared with the previous year
• this was the first annual fall since the Home Office began collecting comparable data in the year ending March 2013

• increases in police recorded hate crime prior to this year were thought to have been driven by improvements in crime recording by the police and better identification of what constitutes a hate crime
• as in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for over two-thirds of such offences (70%; 101,906 offences)
• racially motivated hate crime decreased by 6% over the last year, this was driven by a decrease in racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress offences

1. Introduction

1.1 Overview

This statistical bulletin provides information on the number of hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2023. Data for Devon and Cornwall Police have not been included in this bulletin as they have been unable to supply data following the implementation of a new IT system in November 2022.

Police forces have made significant improvements in how they record crime since 2014. They have also improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime. Because of these changes, police recorded crime figures do not currently provide reliable trends in hate crime. Figures from the police should also not be seen as a measure of prevalence of hate crime. The figures do, however, provide a good measure of the hate crime-related demand on the police. For more information, see section 3: Police recorded hate crime data sources and quality.

1.2 Hate crimes recorded by the police

Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.’ This common definition was agreed in 2007 by the police, Crown Prosecution Service, Prison Service (now the National Offender Management Service) and other agencies that make up the criminal justice system. There are 5 centrally monitored strands of hate crime:

• race or ethnicity
• religion
• sexual orientation
• disability
• transgender identity

In the process of recording a crime, the police can flag an offence as being motivated by one or more of these 5 monitored strands^{[footnote 1]} (for example, an offence can be motivated by hostility towards the victim’s race and religion). For more information, see section 3 - Police recorded hate crime data sources and quality. Hate crime figures in this bulletin are therefore dependent on a flag being correctly applied to an offence that is identified as a hate crime.

The College of Policing (CoP) published updated guidance on how the police should respond to hate crime in October 2020. The Authorised Professional Practice guidance on hate crime includes information on what can be covered by hate crime. The guidance states:

A hate crime is any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on:

• a person’s race or perceived race, or any racial group or ethnic background including countries within the UK and Gypsy and Traveller groups; this includes asylum seekers and migrants
• a person’s religion or perceived religion, or any religious group including those who have no faith
• a person’s sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation, or any person’s sexual orientation
• a person’s disability or perceived disability, or any disability including physical disability, learning disability and mental health or developmental disorders
• a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender, including people who are transsexual, transgender, cross dressers and those who hold a Gender Recognition Certificate under the Gender Recognition Act 2004

The inclusion of migrants within the first category listed above means that offences with a xenophobic element (such as graffiti targeting certain nationalities) can be recorded as race hate crimes by the police).

An offence may also be motivated by hatred towards a characteristic (strand) that is not currently centrally monitored and therefore does not form part of the data collection presented in this statistical bulletin (age or gender, for example).

Hate crimes are taken to mean any crime where the perpetrator’s hostility or prejudice against an identifiable group of people is a factor in determining who is victimised. While a crime may be recorded as a ‘hate crime’, it may only be prosecuted as such if evidence of hostility is submitted as part of the case file.

Terrorist offences may or may not be considered a hate crime depending on the circumstances. A terrorist attack may be targeted against general British or Western values rather than one of the 5 specific strands. Attacks of this nature are therefore not covered by this statistical bulletin, although they will clearly be motivated by hate. However, other terrorist attacks are motivated by a hatred towards one of the centrally monitored hate crime strands covered by this statistical bulletin. For example, the Finsbury Park Mosque attack in June 2017 has been classified as a hate crime because the victims were thought to be targeted because of their religious affiliation.

The Law Commission published recommendations in December 2021 to reform hate crime laws to remove the disparity in the way hate crime laws treat each protected characteristic – race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. In April 2023, the Government published a response to Recommendation 8 of the Law Commission’s review, agreeing with the recommendation that sex or gender should not be added as a protected characteristic for the purposes of aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing. This report can be found here: Government response to recommendation 8 of the Law Commission’s review of hate crime legislation. The Government will respond to the remaining recommendations made by the Law Commission shortly. The report can be found here: Hate crime laws: Final report

1.3 Hate crimes and racially or religiously aggravated offences

There are some offences in the main police recorded crime collection which have specific racially or religiously motivated elements defined by statute. These constitute a set of offences which are distinct from their non-racially or religiously aggravated equivalents (the full list of these is shown in table 1.1). These racially or religiously aggravated offences are, by definition, considered to be hate crimes. Around a half (49%) of hate crime offences were recorded as one of these racially or religiously aggravated offences.

Table 1.1 The 5 racially or religiously aggravated offences and their non-aggravated equivalents

	Racially or religiously aggravated offences		Non-aggravated equivalent offences
Offence code	Offence description	Offence code	Offence description
8P	Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury	8N	Assault with injury
105B	Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury	105A	Assault without Injury
8M	Racially or religiously aggravated harassment	8L	Harassment
9B	Racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress	9A	Public fear, alarm or distress
58J	Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage	58A 58B 58C 58D	Criminal damage to a dwelling Criminal damage to a building other than a dwelling Criminal damage to a vehicle Other criminal damage

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

1.4 Crime survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

The CSEW is a face-to-face victimisation survey and also provides information on hate crimes experienced by people resident in England and Wales. However, the size of the CSEW sample means the number of hate crime incidents and victims estimated in a single survey year is too unreliable to report on. Therefore, 3 annual datasets are combined to provide a larger sample which can be used to produce robust estimates for hate crime. Estimates from the survey were last published in ‘Hate crime, England and Wales, 2019 to 2020’.

The next publication of figures from the CSEW has been delayed because the face-to-face survey was suspended due to public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. CSEW interviews resumed in October 2021. This means that the first 3-year data set from the CSEW will not be available until 2025.

2. Police recorded hate crime

Key results

• in the year ending March 2023, there were 145,214 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Devon and Cornwall police^{[footnote 2]}), a decrease of 5% from the year ending March 2022 (153,536 offences), the first fall since the comparable time series began in the year ending March 2013
• prior to the fall seen this year, police recorded hate crime offences rose between the years ending 2013 and 2022; this prolonged period of increasing offences was thought to have been driven by improvements in crime recording by the police and better identification of what constitutes a hate crime
• there were 101,906 race hate crimes, a fall of 6% from the previous year when there were 108,476 offences, this was driven by a decrease in racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress offences
• as in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for 7 in 10 of all such offences (70%; 101,906 offences)
• religious hate crimes decreased by 4%, from 8,602 to 8,241 offences
• sexual orientation hate crimes fell by 6%, to 24,102 offences, while transgender hate crimes increased by 11%, to 4,732 offences
• disability hate crimes fell slightly (by 1%) compared with the previous year, at 13,777 offences
• over half (51%) of the hate crimes recorded by the police were for public order offences, 41% were for violence against the person offences and 5% were recorded as criminal damage and arson offences

2.1 Prevalence and trends

Hate crimes are a subset of notifiable offences recorded by the police. In the year ending March 2023, 3% of such offences recorded by the police were identified as being hate crimes. This proportion has gradually increased from 1% in the year ending 2013, as the police have improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime. Improved crime recording is especially thought to have impacted on public order and violence against the person offences which account for 92% of hate crime offences collectively.

There were 145,214 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2023 (excluding Devon and Cornwall), a decrease of 5% compared with the year ending March 2022 (153,536 offences; see table 2.1). Data including Devon and Cornwall for previous years can be found in the ‘Hate crime open data’ tables

Table 2.1: Hate crimes recorded by the police by monitored strand, year ending March 2019 to year ending March 2023^{[footnote 3]}

Numbers and percentages						England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall
Hate crime strand	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	% change 2021/22 to 2022/23
Race	77,850	[x]	90,909	108,476	101,906	-6
Religion	8,460	[x]	6,288	8,602	8,241	-4
Sexual orientation	14,161	[x]	18,239	25,639	24,102	-6
Disability	8,052	[x]	9,690	13,905	13,777	-1
Transgender	2,253	[x]	2,728	4,262	4,732	11
Total number of motivating factors	110,776	[x]	127,854	160,884	152,758	-5
Total number of offences	104,765	112,633	122,256	153,536	145,214	-5

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. Total number of offences in the year ending March 2020 includes estimated figures for GMP as they were unable to supply data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019, figures by strand have not been estimated.
2. See Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023: data tables; table 2 for detailed footnotes.

It is possible for a crime to have more than one motivating factor (for example, an offence may be motivated by hostility towards both the victim’s race and religion). Thus, as well as recording the overall number of hate crimes, the police also collect data on the number of motivating factors by strand as shown in table 2.1. For this reason, the sum of the 5 motivating factors in the above exceeds the 145,214 overall hate crime offences recorded by the police. Of the hate crime offences in the year ending March 2023, 5% were estimated to have involved more than one motivating factor^{[footnote 4]}.

As in previous years, race hate crimes accounted for a majority of police recorded hate crimes (70%; 101,906 offences). These offences decreased by 6% compared with the previous year (108,476).

This fall was largely driven by a decrease in racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress when flagged as a hate crime, which fell by 8%, from 50,866 to 46,780 offences.

The fall in these crimes coincides with the publication of interim guidance by the College of Policing on the recording of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) in 2022. A NCHI is an act that is motivated by prejudice or hostility towards a person’s identity but does not amount to a criminal offence.

The interim guidance instructed officers to consider whether there was genuine hostility in the incident or whether it could be considered freedom of speech or thought. While this guidance was aimed only at the recording of NCHIs, and in no way amended the recording practices, processes or thresholds for hate crimes, it is possible that the guidance in turn may have led to greater scrutiny of the threshold of what constitutes a criminal offence of public fear, alarm or distress. However, the Home Office Counting Rules for the recording of these offences has not changed.

A new statutory Code of Practice and corresponding finalised authorised professional practice on the recording of NCHIs was published in June 2023, after the reporting period for this statistical bulletin.

There were falls in all 5 of the aggravated offences shown in table 1.1 over the last year (data not shown). These offences accounted for around two-thirds (66%) of race hate crimes in the year ending March 2023.

The proportion of hate crimes that were perceived to be racially motivated in nature has steadily decreased from 85% in the year ending March 2013 to 70% in the latest year. This reflects the greater percentage increases in the other 4 strands recorded by the police over the last decade.

The volume of hate crimes motivated by other strands remains relatively low and therefore even small changes in annual numbers can result in apparently large percentage changes.

Religious hate crimes decreased by 4% between the year ending March 2022 and the year ending March 2023 (from 8,602 to 8,241).

Sexual orientation hate crimes fell by 6% (from 25,639 to 24,102 offences). This was the first fall in these offences since the year ending March 2013.

Disability hate crimes decreased by 1% (from 13,905 to 13,777) over the last year, the first fall in since the time series began in the year ending March 2012.

Transgender identity hate crimes rose by 11% (from 4,262 to 4,732) over the same period, the highest number since the time series began in the year ending March 2012. Transgender issues have been heavily discussed by politicians, the media and on social media over the last year, which may have led to an increase in these offences, or more awareness in the police in the identification and recording of these crimes.

The number of hate crimes recorded by the police has more than tripled since the year ending March 2013, from 41,294 offences to 145,214 offences recorded in the latest year.

The increases in police recorded hate crime in recent years were thought to have been driven by improvements in crime recording by the police. This followed a critical review by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) on how the police were recording crime in 2014, which, in part, led to the removal of the designation of police recorded crime as National Statistics. It is also thought that growing awareness of hate crime was likely to have led to improved identification of such offences.

Hate crime offences by crime type

Section 2.2 shows that 92% of hate crimes in the year ending March 2023 were for either public order or violence against the person offences, continuing the pattern seen in previous years. These 2 offence groups were thought to have been previously subject to relatively high levels of under-recording and thus improvements in crime recording are likely to have had a larger impact on these groups than other offences.

Figure 2.1 shows the indexed trend in overall violent and public order offences since the year ending March 2013 compared with all hate crime offences over the same period. As can be seen, there is a strong correlation between the increase in overall public order and violence against the person offences and hate crime. While hate crimes have fallen in the latest year, the overall number of violence against the person and public order offences was similar to the previous year.

Figure 2.1: Indexed trends in the number of police recorded violence against the person and public order and hate crime offences, England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall, the year ending March 2013 to the year ending March 2023 (2012/13 = 100)

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police.
2. Total number of offences in the year ending March 2020 includes estimated figures for GMP as they were unable to supply data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019.

There have also thought to have been short-term genuine rises in hate crime following certain trigger events in recent years. Increases in hate crime were seen around the EU Referendum in June 2016 and the terrorist attacks in 2017. There was also an increase in public order hate crimes during the summer of 2020 following the widespread Black Lives Matter protests and far-right counter-protests.

Hate crime data by Police Force Area from the year ending March 2012 to the year ending March 2023 can be found in the Hate crime open data tables.

Religious hate crimes

In April 2016, the Home Office began collecting information from the police on the perceived religion of victims of religious hate crime. By perceived, we mean the religion targeted by the offender. While in the majority of offences the perceived and actual religion of the victim will be the same, in some cases they will differ. For example, if anti-Muslim graffiti is sprayed on a religious temple of another faith, this would still be recorded as an offence of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage and identified by the respective police force as a religious hate crime against Muslims.

There are 9 different perceived religion flags in this collection, which match those reported upon in the 2021 Census:

• Buddhist
• Christian
• Hindu
• Jewish
• Muslim
• Sikh
• other
• no religion
• unknown

Of the 8,241 religious hate crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2023, information on the targeted religion was provided in 7,756 of the offences (94%)^{[footnote 5]}.

In some cases, more than one perceived religion had been tagged on one offence (for example, a piece of graffiti may have targeted more than one religion). All police forces sent data on the perceived religion of the victims of religious hate crimes. Across all forces, in 19% of offences, the targeted religion was not known, but for some forces the number of offences recorded with ‘unknown religion’ was relatively high.

In the year ending March 2023, where the perceived religion of the victim was recorded, over 4 in 10 (44%) of religious hate crime offences were targeted against Muslims (3,400 offences). The next most commonly targeted group were Jewish people, who were targeted in around 1 in 5 (19%) of religious hate crimes (1,510 offences). Information on the other targeted religions for the year ending March 2023 can be found in table 2.2 below.

Table 2.2: Number and proportion of religious hate crimes recorded by the police¹, by the perceived targeted religion, year ending March 2023

Numbers and percentages		England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall
Perceived religion of the victim	Number of offences 2022/23	Percentage 2022/23
Buddhist	18	<1
Christian	609	8
Hindu	286	4
Jewish	1,510	19
Muslim	3,400	44
Sikh	302	4
Other	451	6
No religion	166	2
Unknown	1,491	19
Total number of targeted religions	8,233
Total number of offences	7,756

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. In some offences more than one religion has been recorded as being targeted, therefore the sum of the proportions do not add to 100%.
2. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police.
3. See Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023: data tables; table 4 for detailed footnotes.

Racial or religiously aggravated offences

The data the Home Office receives in the main police recorded crime return for racially or religiously aggravated offences are available on a monthly basis^{[footnote 6]} whereas data for all hate crimes for all forces are only available annually. This allows analysis of in-year trends in these offences. An indexed chart of these offences and their non-aggravated equivalent offence are shown in (Figure 2.2).

There were 4 clear spikes in these aggravated offences which were not seen in the non-aggravated offences:

• July 2016, following the EU Referendum
• July 2017, following the terrorist attacks seen in this year
• Summer 2020, following the Black Lives Matter protests and far-right counter-protests following the death of George Floyd on 25th May in the United States of America
• the fourth spike in the summer of 2021 was largely due to an increase of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress offences; these offences have fallen in the latest year by 7% (from 55,470 to 51,331); the fall in these offences is discussed above

Figure 2.2: Indexed number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police by month, England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall, April 2015 to March 2023

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police.

2.2 Hate crimes by type of offence

Just over half (51%) of the hate crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2023 were for public order offences and over one-third (41%) were for violence against the person offences (Figure 2.3; Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023: appendix tables; table 6. Together, these offence categories accounted for just over 9 in 10 (92%) of all hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales.

Figure 2.3: Distribution of offences flagged as hate crimes, England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall, the year ending March 2023

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police.

The distribution of hate crime offences differs markedly from overall police recorded crime. Theft offences accounted for just under one-third (31%) of all recorded crime in the year ending March 2023, for information on offences for all police recorded crime see: Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics; these offences would be less likely to involve a motivating factor against a monitored strand. In contrast, public order offences accounted for just 11% of all notifiable offences compared with 51% of hate crime offences (figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4: Breakdown of hate crimes and overall recorded crime by selected offence types, England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall, the year ending March 2023

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police.

Figure 2.5 shows what type of offences were recorded for each monitored strand. As in previous years, public order offences were the most common category to be recorded for all strands except for disability-targeted hate crime. Stalking and harassment offences were the most commonly recorded for disability-targeted hate crimes.

Figure 2.5: Breakdown of hate crime by selected offence types and monitored strand, England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall, year ending March 2023

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police.

2.3 Hate crime outcomes

The Home Office collects information on the investigative outcomes of police recorded offences, including those that are identified as hate crimes. For further information on outcomes see Crime outcomes in England and Wales: 2022 to 2023.

This section covers how the police have dealt with hate crimes recorded in the year ending March 2023. This analysis is based on the outcomes assigned to crimes recorded in the year ending March 2023 at the time the data were extracted (July 2023) for analysis. Some offences will not have been assigned an outcome at this time and therefore these figures are subject to change.

Racially or religiously aggravated offence outcomes

Data presented in this section is for racially or religiously aggravated offences. This data was available for all police forces (excluding Devon and Cornwall). Data on outcomes for all hate crime offences, which was available for 30 of the 44 police forces^{[footnote 7]}, is presented in the next section.

At the time this data was extracted, 88% of racially or religiously aggravated offences had been assigned an outcome, compared with 94% of their non-aggravated counterparts, see police recorded crime ‘Outcomes open data year ending March 2023’ data tables.

Figure 2.6 shows that racially or religiously aggravated public order and assault offences were more likely to be dealt with by a charge/summons than their non-aggravated counterparts, reflecting the more serious nature of racially or religiously aggravated offences. For example, 3 times the proportion of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm and distress offences had been dealt with by charge/summons than the non-aggravated equivalent offences (9% and 3% respectively). In contrast, this trend was reversed for criminal damage, where non-aggravated offences were more likely to result in a charge or summons than aggravated offences (4% and 3% respectively).

Figure 2.6: Percentage of racially or religiously aggravated offences and their non-aggravated equivalents recorded in the year ending March 2023 resulting in charge/summons, by offence type, England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:

1. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police.

The overall proportion of racially or religiously aggravated offences resulting in a charge and or summons was, at 8%, the same proportion as the year ending March 2022 at the time of publication last year. This halts the long-term downward trend seen since the introduction of the Outcomes Framework in year ending March 2015, when, for example, 30% of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress offences were resolved by a charge and or summons, in line with non-aggravated offences. This trend is likely to have been influenced by the changing caseload and crime mix being dealt with by the police.

Flagged hate crime offences – Home Office Data Hub

The Home Office Data Hub (HODH) is a record level dataset of offences recorded by the police in England and Wales and provides information on how hate crimes have been dealt with by the police. The analyses presented are based on data from 30 of the 44 police forces^{[footnote 8]} in England and Wales that supplied adequate data to the Data Hub. These forces data accounted for almost three-quarters (72%) of all police recorded hate crime in the year ending March 2023.

In total, 89% of hate crime flagged offences recorded in the year ending March 2023 had been assigned an outcome at the time the data were extracted for analysis^{[footnote 9]}. The remaining 11% were still under investigation. In comparison, 91% of non-hate crime offences had been assigned an outcome at the time of data extraction.

Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023: appendix tables; table 4 shows that 7% of all hate crime flagged offences had been dealt with by a charge or summons. This was lower than the figure of 9% in the year ending March 2022. Over the last year, the proportion of cases recorded where victims did not support police action and cases where no suspect was identified increased. As explained in Crime outcomes in England and Wales: 2022 to 2023, these trends may have been influenced by the changing caseload and crime mix being dealt with by the police.

Figure 2.4 shows that violence against the person, public order offences and criminal damage and arson offences comprised 96% of hate crime flagged offences. This proportion was the same for the 30 forces included in this analysis, suggesting that these forces may be broadly representative of all.

The proportions of outcomes assigned varied by offence type (Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023: appendix tables; table 5; figure 2.7):

• in the latest year, 5% of violence against the person hate crime flagged offence were dealt with by a charge or summons, a similar proportion to non-flagged offences (5%); these proportions have moved closer in recent years
• a greater proportion (9%) of hate crime flagged public order offences had been dealt with by a charge or summons compared with non-hate crime flagged public order offences (6%)
• a similar proportion of hate crime and non-hate crime flagged criminal damage offences were dealt with by charge or summons, 4% for both; in previous years flagged offences were more likely to be dealt with by charge or summons than non-flagged offences

Figure 2.7: Percentage of selected offences resulting in charge/summons, by hate crime strand, offences recorded in the year ending March 2023, England and Wales, 30 forces

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office Data Hub

Notes:

1. Forces included are: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, City of London, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia and West Yorkshire.

The most frequent outcome recorded for violent offences was “evidential difficulties as the victim does not support action”; this was the outcome for 32% of hate crime flagged violence against the person offences compared with 43% of non-hate crime flagged offences (Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023: appendix tables; table 5).

Figure 2.8 shows the proportion of hate crimes that were dealt with by charge or summons for each of the 5 hate crime strands for three offence groups. While the proportions for race, religious and sexual orientation hate crimes tended to be higher than for non-hate crimes, the figures for disability and transgender hate crime were lower.

Figure 2.8: Percentage of selected offences resulting in charge/summons, by hate crime strand, offences recorded in the year ending March 2023, England and Wales, 30 forces

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office Data Hub

Notes:

1. Forces included are: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, City of London, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia and West Yorkshire.

Figure 2.9 shows the median number of days taken, from the date the crime was recorded until it was closed with a final outcome, for selected hate crime and non-hate crime offences. Hate crime offences, on average, took longer to be assigned a final outcome than non-hate crime offences. For example, the median number of days taken for criminal damage and arson hate crime offences was 29 days, compared with 5 days for non-hate crime offences. Similarly, it took longer to compete an investigation of violence against the person hate crime offences (median=52 days) than for non-hate crime flagged violent offences (median=24 days). This suggests more investigative effort being devoted to hate crime offences reflecting the more serious nature of these crimes.

Figure 2.9: Median number of days taken to assign an outcome, hate crime flagged and non-hate crime flagged offences, outcomes recorded in the year ending March 2023, England and Wales, 30 forces

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office Data Hub

Notes:

1. Forces included are: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, City of London, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia and West Yorkshire.

Experimental statistics: Ethnicity of victims in racially or religiously aggravated crimes – Home Office Data Hub

From April 2021, it became a requirement for forces to provide the Home Office with the ethnicity of victims of racially or religiously aggravated offences. This data continue to be published as ‘experimental statistics’, which are official statistics that are in the testing phase and not yet fully developed. Home Office Statisticians will continue to monitor this data in the future and will work with police forces to improve data quality. Data for 37 of the 44 police forces^{[footnote 10]}, is presented in the next section. These 37 forces represented 88% of racially or religiously aggravated crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2023.

Of the 74,235 racially or religiously aggravated crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2023, information on the victim ethnicity was provided in 38,994 of the offences (53%).

In the year ending March 2023, where the ethnicity of the victim was known, the victim was identified by the police as being white in around one-third of offences (34%). Just under one-third of victims were identified as black (29%), a similar proportion to Asian victims (30%); table 2.3). These proportions were similar to the previous year. It is likely that offences against white victims will include xenophobic abuse against people not born in the UK.

However, accounting for different population sizes, black and Asian victims had far higher rates of victimisation than white people. In the year ending March 2023, based on the published population figures by ethnicity from 2021, white victims had a rate of 3 aggravated offences per 10,000 population compared with 50 per 10,000 population for black victims and 25 per 10,000 population for Asian victims.

However, given the relatively high proportion of offences where the ethnicity of victim was not recorded, these figures should be taken as indicative only.

Table 2.3: Proportion of racially and religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police, by victim ethnicity (where known), the year ending March 2023, England and Wales, 37 forces

Percentages						England and Wales
			Ethnicity
Offence Code	Description	White	Black	Asian	Middle Eastern	Chinese, Japanese or South East Asian
105B	Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury	28	33	31	5	3
58J	Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage	41	18	32	6	4
8M	Racially or religiously aggravated harassment	38	26	27	6	3
8P	Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury	31	31	29	6	3
9B	Racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress	34	29	30	4	3
Total		34	29	30	5	3

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office Data Hub

Notes:

1. Forces included are: Bedfordshire, British Transport Police, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Dyfed-Powys, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Gwent, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Wiltshire.

3. Police recorded hate crime data sources and quality

3.1 Introduction

In January 2014, the UK Statistics Authority published its assessment of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) crime statistics. It found that statistics based on police recorded crime data, having been assessed against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (now the Code of Practice for Statistics), did not meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics.

Police forces have made significant improvements in how they record crime since 2014. They have also improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime over this time period. Due to these improvements, police recorded crime figures do not currently provide reliable trends in hate crime. The figures do, however, provide a good measure of the hate crime-related demand on the police.

The UK Statistics Authority published a list of requirements for these statistics to regain the National Statistics accreditation. Some of the requirements of this assessment were to provide more detail on how data sources were used to produce these statistics, along with more information on the quality of the statistics. Additionally, there was a requirement to provide information on the process used by police forces to submit and revise data, and the validation processes used by the Home Office. To ensure that this publication meets the high standards required by the UK Statistics Authority, details are provided below.

In May 2022, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) wrote to the Home Office following their compliance review into published hate crime statistics across the UK. The OSR recognised the difficulties in measuring hate crime but found a range of positive features that demonstrate the value and quality of the published statistics in their review. Additionally, they recognised the difficulty in presenting data on police recorded hate crime without the CSEW estimates to provide context to the numbers, meaning “it is difficult to determine whether police recorded hate crime is increasing”. They stated that they had heard from users of a ‘perception problem’, where “the public is likely to see police recorded crime as the main data source, despite ongoing concerns about data quality” and asked the Home Office to make clear in this publication the limitations of police recorded crime data. We have added on the uncertainty of police recorded crime trends in response to this recommendation.

3.2 Police recorded crime data sources and validation process

Hate crime data are supplied to the Home Office by the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales, plus the British Transport Police. Devon and Cornwall Police have not been able to supply data for the year ending March 2023 following the implementation of a new IT system in November 2022. Greater Manchester Police were not able to supply hate crime data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019.

Forces either supply the data at least monthly via the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) or on an annual basis in a manual return. For forces with data on the Data Hub, the Home Office extracts the number of offences for each force which have been flagged by forces as having been motivated by one or more of the monitored strands. Therefore, counts of hate crime via the HODH are dependent on the flag being used for each hate crime offence. It is then possible to derive the count of offences and the monitored strands covered.

In the manual return, police forces submit both the total number of hate crime offences (that is a count of the number of unique offences motivated by one or more of the 5 monitored strands) and the monitored strands (or motivating factors) associated with these offences. From the year ending March 2016, police forces who returned data manually were required to provide an offence group breakdown for recorded hate crimes; prior to the year ending March 2016 only an aggregated total of hate crimes for each of the 5 strands was asked for. It is possible for more than one of the monitored strands (motivating factors) to be assigned to a crime. For example, an offence could be motivated by hostility to race and religion, so would be counted under both strands but would only constitute one offence.

It is known that for some police forces, the addition of tags to crime records could be improved. For example, there may be crimes that are operationally treated as a hate crime but were not correctly identified as a hate crime on their crime recording system. In July 2018, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published a report on how the police deal with hate crime, including how crimes are flagged. Findings included a lack of recognition in forces about how important the flagging of hate crimes is and concerns around the lack of effective audit arrangements to check flags had been applied correctly.

The full report can be found here: Understanding the difference: the initial police response to hate crime.

Further information on how the police record hate crime can be found in the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice guidance on hate crime publication launched in October 2020.

At the end of each financial year, the Home Office carry out a series of quality assurance checks on the hate crime data collected from the police forces (either by aggregate return or via the HODH).

These checks include:

• looking for any large or unusual changes in hate crimes from the previous year
• looking for outliers
• checking that the number of hate crimes by strand is higher than the total number of offences

Police forces are then asked to investigate these trends and either provide an explanation or resubmit figures where the reconciliation identifies data quality issues.

The data is then tabulated by monitored strand and year and sent back to forces for them to verify. At this stage, they are asked to confirm in writing that the data they submitted is correct and if it is not, then they have the opportunity to revise their figures.

From April 2016, the Home Office began collecting information from the police on the perceived religion of victims of religious hate crimes – that the religion targeted by the offender. While in the majority of offences the perceived and actual religion of the victim will be the same, in some cases this will differ. For example, if anti-Muslim graffiti is sprayed on a religious temple of another faith, this would be recorded as an offence of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage and flagged by the respective police force as a religious hate crime against Muslims. This collection was voluntary in the year ending March 2017 and made mandatory for the year ending March 2018.

From April 2021, the Home Office has begun the collecting the ethnicity of the victims of racial hate crimes recorded by the police. These were published for the second time as experimental statistics in this statistical bulletin.

3.3 Understanding differences between the CSEW and police recorded hate crime

Statistics on police recorded hate crime are published on an annual basis, with estimates from the CSEW published every third year. However, due to the suspension of the face-to-face CSEW due to public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the next estimates from the CSEW will be delayed until 2025.

Trends in police recorded and CSEW hate crime have been notably different over recent years. Police recorded hate crime has risen, while the CSEW has shown a fall over the longer-term. The main reason for this difference will be due to the improvements to recording processes and practices made by the police since 2014. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) have conducted a range of inspections related to police forces’ crime and incident recording practices in recent years. In 2014, Crime recording: making the victim count concluded that 33% of cases involving violence were not recorded by the police in England and Wales. Improvements made by the police were identified in their report State of policing: 2019, where a lower proportion (12%) of violent offences reported to the police went unrecorded.

These improvements have made substantial contributions to rises in recorded crime over recent years. This effect has been more pronounced for some crime types, such as violence against the person and public order offences. These offences account for 9 in 10 police recorded hate crimes, meaning police figures do not currently provide reliable trends in hate crime. The absence of CSEW estimates means it is harder to determine with increased in police recorded hate crime are genuine, or a continuation of recording improvements.

Additionally, there are a number of differences in the coverage of the CSEW and police recorded crime.

The CSEW is a victimisation survey which covers adults aged 16 and over resident in households in England and Wales. Police recorded crime figures includes crimes against people of all ages, against society (crimes where there is not a direct victim, such as public order offences) as well as businesses and institutions. This is a key difference for hate crime offences as public order offences are not well covered by the CSEW, as many of these offences will not involve a specifically identifiable victim. Conversely, public order offences account for over a half of police recorded hate crime.

The sources cover different time periods. The most recently available CSEW data was for the combined 3 annual datasets – the year ending March 2018 to the year ending March 2020. Furthermore, as respondents are interviewed throughout the survey year for their experiences of crime in the year to interview, the 3-year survey period actually relate to a near 4-year period. This is required to produce more robust estimates on numbers of hate crimes per year from the survey. The CSEW will therefore only give a very broad estimate of the level of hate crime in England and Wales across these 4 years and will not provide any information on whether the level of hate crime has changed in this period.

Police recorded hate crime data is available on an annual basis. In addition, for racially or religiously aggravated offences, data is available for all police forces in England and Wales on a monthly basis, so trends in these crimes around events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017 can be examined. However, as mentioned above it is known that police recorded crime data has been heavily affected by improvements in crime recording by the police over recent years, so data from the police is limited in assessing longer-term trends in hate crime.

Other differences in coverage include:

• respondents to the CSEW might misunderstand the survey questions; when they are asked whether they think a crime was committed because of a motivating factor, they may instead be responding based upon their perceived vulnerability; this is likely to be a reason why the estimate of disability hate crime is much higher in the CSEW than the number of these offences recorded by the police
• the respondent is asked in the survey whether the hate crime incident came to the attention of the police and, not whether the police actually recorded a crime (the police may witness an incident and decide that a crime was not committed, for example)
• similarly, while a respondent might say the crime did come to the attention of the police, the survey does not ask whether the respondent told the police that they thought it was motivated by one of the 5 hate crime strands; it is possible that some offences estimated by the survey may have been recorded by the police as a crime, but not specifically as a hate crime
• in the recording of a crime, it might not become apparent that there was a motivating hate factor, meaning that police may not ask the direct question whether the victim thought that the crime was a hate crime

4. Further information

Accompanying tables

The data tables can be found here:
Hate crime, England and Wales, 2022 to 2023

Other related publications

Previous hate crime statistical bulletins published by the Home Office are available here:
Hate crime statistics

The Office for National Statistics publishes quarterly publications on crime in England and Wales:
Crime and justice

Information on crime outcomes can be found here:
Crime outcomes in England and Wales statistics

Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables

The True Vision website contains more information about hate crime and how to report it

The Crown Prosecution Service website also carries information about hate crime, including policy and guidance and performance information, which can be found here:
CPS hate crime

The government’s plan for dealing with hate crime in England and Wales can be found here:
Hate crime action plan 2016 to 2020

Hate crime statistics for Northern Ireland can be found here:
Police service of Northern Ireland: Hate motivation statistics

Hate crime statistics for Scotland for 2022 to 2023 can be found here:
Hate crime in Scotland 2022 to 2023
(figures published by the Scottish Government are based on the number of offenders charged, rather than police recorded crime)

Feedback and enquiries

We welcome feedback on the annual statistics release. If you have any feedback or enquiries about this publication, please contact crime and policing statistics via crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.

1. Forces may collect wider hate crime data; these are not centrally monitored by the Home Office. ↩

2. All police recorded crime figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police force who were unable to provide data for the year ending March 2023. ↩

3. Greater Manchester police figures for the year ending March 2020 are based on an average of figures supplied for the year ending March 2019 and the year ending March. ↩

4. Estimation based upon data from 30 forces who supplied data to the Home Office Data Hub. ↩

5. Includes cases where religion has been flagged as unknown. ↩

6. Although data from the main police recorded crime collection are sent to the Home Office broken down by month, the data are only quality assured with police forces on a quarterly basis. ↩

7. Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, City of London, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Yorkshire. ↩

8. These forces were: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, City of London, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Yorkshire. ↩

9. Data was extracted July 2022. ↩

10. Bedfordshire, British Transport Police, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cleveland, Cumbria, Dorset, Durham, Dyfed-Powys, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Gwent, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Wiltshire. ↩